The Canal Foundation hosts The Berlin Wall. A World Divided, a large-scale exhibition that will be in Madrid until January 12, 2025. The exhibition, which has already been visited by more than 150,000 people, addresses the history of the Berlin Wall in the context of the Cold War through original objects and unpublished testimonies of those who experienced this brutal division firsthand. Until November 10, tickets to this exhibition will have a 35% discount with the code 35ANIVERSARY, commemorating the anniversary of the fall of the Wall.
The operation is simple: select the day, time and number of tickets in the Fever app. Before making the payment, in “price details”, select in your Fever app the button “coupon or gift card” and there you can enter the code 35ANIVERSARY.
Throughout the year, for the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall the exhibition has presented an extensive cultural program of parallel activities. The latest, which will take place on November 6, coinciding with the anniversary of the fall, sold out the same day it was announced.
The guitar duo Essener Gitarrenduo will present the concert “Echoes of Freedom”, a journey through divided Berlin featuring a series of songs with Spanish guitar that recount the most important events of the construction and fall of this symbol of the Cold War.
35 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall
On the night of November 9, 1989, after the unexpected press release that would revolutionize the global media, thousands of Berliners from “both sides” approached the Wall. The hammers and chisels of the “Mauerspechte” (Wall woodpeckers) resound loudly. The Berlin Wall begins to fall. A historic event that will be 35 years old this year, 2024, and which is reflected in the first traveling exhibition on the greatest symbol of division in history: The Berlin Wall. A World Divided.
Berlin Wall exhibition in Madrid, what to see?
More than a third of the objects on display come directly from the archives of the Berlin Wall Foundation. Among them, the first barbed wire fences and bricks used for its construction and objects related to the escape attempts and victims. One of the most anticipated elements to see are the more than 20 meters of the original wall, which is 3.5 meters high and weighs about 2.6 tons.
We can find a radiation detector, the section of a spy tunnel that crossed the subway Berlin or secret files of the Stasi, the East German intelligence service, among many other objects.
In order to assemble this ambitious collection, more than 60 borrowers and some 20 museums and international institutions contributed part of their collections. These include the Hiroshima Peace Museum, the Stasi Archive and the Allied Museum in Berlin.
In addition to the objects, the exhibition is accompanied by a carefully curated narrative and an individual audio guide, allowing us to explore the complex history of the Wall in depth and to understand what it was like to live in a divided city.
A journey through 5 exhibition halls
The exhibition is divided into five thematic areas. The first part immerses us in the context of post-World War II Europe and how conflicting visions led to the Cold War.
The second room offers a portrait of what life was like in Berlin before the Wall, which serves as a prelude to the third and fourth areas, focusing on the Wall conflict. In the latter, visitors can delve into the experience of living and working in a divided city.
Finally, the fifth room offers a global view of the conflict, as well as its impact and the serious consequences that were experienced in the rest of the countries of the world.
The Berlin Wall. A World Divided has been organized by Musealia and developed in collaboration with the Stiftung Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall Foundation), the institution that looks after the historical legacy and the memory of the victims of the communist regime in East Germany. The latter has provided solid historical advice and contributed to the development of the contents.
The exhibition was curated by, among others, Dr. Gerhard Sälter, Head of Research and Documentation at the Berlin Wall Foundation, and Dr. Christian Ostermann, Director of the History and Public Policy Program and the Cold War International History Project at the Wilson Center in Washington.